Chowhound Bans Muk, Takes Material

One of the first items on The Muk Report dealt with my being banned from noted food website, Chowhound.

Recently, Chowhound released The Chowhound's Guide to the New York Tristate Area through Penguin Books. The book is basically a quasi-organized collection of restaurant information culled directly from the Chowhound website - more precisely, the users of the site.

Paging through the Best of Chinatown section in my copy, I stumbled upon the following, written about my favorite Vietnamese restaurant, Nha Trang. From page 76,

"The pork pieces are tender, charred in the right places, with a very subtle caramelized sweetness. Mmmm, so good, says *Muk*."

God, do I feel violated. And not in the "hurts so good" kind of way.

First I get banned - a punishment which most certainly did not fit the proverbial crime. Then they take my contributions, profit from them, and leave me penniless and insane still trying to play a phonograph record with a peanut.

Huh?

Look, the point here is that... shit, I don't know. Maybe the point is that Chowhound sucks. Well, that's not entirely right. Chowhound is great, but their staff sucks. Or maybe it's just some of their staff that sucks. Something like that.

I think I need to drown my sorrows in spring rolls and chicken curry over rice vermicelli.